Ukraine's Olympic midfielder Maksym Khlan commented on the team's poor start to the 2024 Olympics.
Maxim Khlan"There are games where you need luck. Tough matches must be overcome with patience and waiting for your moments. Also, sometimes the referee interferes in the game when it is not necessary, the penalty is meaningless... We must understand that it had a very psychological impact. I think it was an unqualified decision, first of all, it was difficult to take this penalty, our game did not go well. We did everything we could, tried to attack, but we were unlucky somewhere. We need to focus on the next game, put all negative thoughts aside, and move on.
We saw what happened in the Argentina-Morocco match. Refereeing decisions at the Olympics are very unclear. Moreover, in our case, when there was no foul, there was minimal contact. This is a contact sport, and such contact is permissible. Therefore, it was a wrong decision not in our favor.
12 extra minutes? Yes, we saw it at the World Cup. Perhaps they are experimenting now. It was to our advantage, but we did not use the extra minutes. Still, we have to understand that there were a lot of wrong decisions from the referee, so we couldn't influence it," Hlan said.
